We are always on the move today and what could be better than the ability to carry our favourite music or radio along with us? The need for this has spawned a tremendous amount of innovation in consumer audio semiconductor technologies.
You have MP3 players, that are hand held devices that play recorded music or speech. Some Ultra-portable players are built with internal flash memory like SmartMedia cards, MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital cards or CompactFlash cards. These portable audio players are moving towards being a portable media player (PMP) with the support of Video as well. A good model will support MPEG-2 and 4, WMV and DivX movie formats, as well as MP3, WAV, ASF and WMA audio files. Some can also receive and record FM radio and voice. The latest PMPs now also support wireless connectivity in addition to USB or Firewire for recording and exchanging music and movies.
If you are making long journeys and wish to tune into your favourite radio channel, then the satellite radio is a clear choice. A satellite radio is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communication satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals
For Hi-Fi buffs looking for professional quality music renderings, the components of a Hi-Fi system that contributed to distortion free and realistic reproduction in the past, were turntables, diamond needles, huge class A amplifiers and giant speaker systems. The audio recordings, now mainly digital, come from FM and Satellite radio, CDs, DVDs, Portable Media Players using MP3 and other compressed audio formats, Dolby 5.1 multiple channel Movie tracks, Computer Synthesizers, Games, Podcasts and Streaming Audio and Video over the internet. Digital audio can now be processed in various ways before rendering it through the speakers. You can remove noise, enhance frequency distribution to change the way it sounds, add surround sound, process multiple channels, adapt reproduction to room acoustics, all these enhancing user satisfaction.
By Tony Valentino, Quickfilter Technologies, Inc. Audio quality in consumer electronics is often sacrificed for cost reasons. However, as the markets for these electronic products mature, audio quality will become an important product differentiator. The compromise in audio quality is often reflected by the manufacturers’ choice of speakers.
